I Fell in Love with a Black Hole
by Kanthia
Summary: There are really only three things you need to get by: a warm meal in your stomach, a safe place to sleep, and a reason to get up in the morning - but thanks to the sob story that is her life she has none of those. No stomach. No home. No Goku. (Krillin/18; oneshot.)
Death's a choice, and Goku had made it: went graciously into the afterlife, damn him, left a grieving widow and a confused son and all his loser friends to pick up the pieces. Cell is dead - but 17 is gone, and 16 is a heap of scrap metal pulverized beyond repair. Enhanced Human Designated Cyborg 0018 (18 for short, thanks for asking) touches down on the earth after watching the whole dragon-please-resurrect-my-daddy pity-party unfold and lets her mind compile data on cloud formations for a while.

 _Stupid old man,_ she finally allows herself to think, truly, utterly miserable. There'd been this little nuclear warhead zip-tied to her heart that had vanished when the dragon had looked at her funny. It had brought everyone back to life - except Goku, thanks a bunch - but does it count as life when you get your energy from solar panels coating skin cells, or process thoughts at twice your biological speed with the help of a small computer lodged in your amygdala? Was 17 out there, somewhere, jabbing his thumb out for trucks and ready to go anywhere else, or is he as dead as she feels? And what the hell does she do now that, for the first time in her life, she's all alone?

So she does what she's always wanted to do: flies to the nearest town and steals a shit-ton of jewellery, punches through glass display cases and takes whatever strikes her fancy. Finds a mall, helps herself to a couple of really nice outfits, kicks a hole through the wall and flies off as police bullets bounce off her skin.

"Uh, Miss," a clerk says, rubbing her hands together; she'd snuck up behind 18, who should have known better than to stand around ruminating. She's in another mall in another town and is probably a little lost, and her future is a complete mess. "Are you looking for anything in particular?"

 _My name,_ she thinks. _And the memory of where I grew up. And my brother._ And those three days driving vaguely in the direction of Goku's house, 16 in the back of the truck tending to a baby bird with a broken wing, 17 singing off-key to country songs on the radio.

They'd sworn they'd take on the world together, once Gero and Goku were out of the way. It's just not the same.

"No, not really," she says, punching through the nearest glass cabinet and grabbing a string of pearls. An alarm blares. She lifts off the ground, pulling up her internal compass and what little hope she can muster, orienting herself north. Her future's a mess, and her past is completely unknown, but maybe if she starts at the beginning, or at least as far back as she can remember -

Just beyond North City is the rubble of Gero's old lab, even the basement where Cell had germinated nothing but ash. Whoever had come through had been brutal and thorough. It hadn't been much but it had been a home for four years and now it, too, is gone.

18 sifts through the wreckage anyways, hoping for some sort of sign. She knows her brother well, knows what kinds of souvenirs he would scrounge up from a place like this, and how he likes to place his wrath: he hasn't been by. Who else could have done this?

 _Goku's friends._ Where are they now? All her data is out-of-date - Vegeta wasn't supposed to still be on Earth - but maybe - yes, Yamcha had been involved with a scientist, Briefs' daughter. Gero had accelerated his plans because they had all been training so hard; maybe Briefs had somehow found out about his plans, and she had told them all about the secret lab in the mountains? 18 raises a hand, ready to salt the earth and her past and the whole damn planet, but freezes.

They had known there was a bomb in her. There'd been that device - and that wish - _they had taken her blueprints._ "Oh, shit," she says, scaring away the birds.

* * *

In Cell she'd dreamed vaguely about her childhood, smoking cigarettes with her brother on the outskirts of some city with a name she couldn't quite remember. Then someone had driven a fist into her, into Cell, and she'd woken up on a stone platform in the sky long after the end of the world.

Goku and his friends have some sort of way of telling where people are by the way they leak energy, like candles burning in dark places - but 18 has nothing of the sort in her, just outdated databases, a device that converts sunlight to energy, and something a little better than despair. She asks around North City about the Briefs' home address and gets no help; 16 might have known, but 16 is dead. The witching hour finds her at wit's end, contemplating blowing the city up and moving on.

"Hey," someone calls. Behind her there's a diner bleeding light onto the street, a shitty little dive in the middle of a shitty little town. A woman in a dirty apron with black hair in a ponytail is leaning against the doorframe. "You look lost. Wanna come in?"

She doesn't, but she doesn't have anything better to do, so she does.

"Strange feeling, being alive, eh?" 18 seats herself at the bar, the whole place empty; the woman, who introduces herself as Cana, puts a mug of coffee in front of her. "Not two days ago everyone thought we were gonna bite the big one, and here we are, fuckin' around just like we did before anyone heard of Cell. How 'bout that?"

18 sips gingerly and, too late, realizes it's the first thing she's had to eat in four years. Her tongue screams at the sensation. She shrugs her shoulders in response.

(There's enough of her stomach left to process a bit of food if she needs to. Gero had sworn he left it in there in case for some reason she'd have to go for years without the sun, but she has a feeling he was just waxing nostalgic in the language of science. There are traces of a human being all over her body, shadows of whatever she used to be.)

"Not much of a talker, huh? You got a name?"

(Nights are so long when you can't sleep.)

"18."

Cana raises an eyebrow. Her eyes are green, too green. Just like his. "Like the number? Your parents must not have been very creative, huh."

"You could say that." And despite everything, she smiles.

Cana had lucked out by Cell. "Everyone has a friend, or a friend of a friend, who got picked off. I was supposed to be visiting a girlfriend in Ginger Town but my damn car gave out that morning - just my luck, eh?" 18 remembers against her will - she has a photographic memory, damn him - the sight of the isles going up in flames one by one, and 16 begging her to leave. "Then the dust clears and all the dead folks just start diggin' themselves out of their graves. Somethin' strange happened when Cell died that they ain't telling us, that's for sure."

"Yeah."

"So what brings you to North City? You lookin' for someone?"

"Yeah."

"Lose someone to Cell?"

"Yeah." There's a long silence, as Cana starts some pancakes on the griddle. She moves with so little purpose, keeps her hands busy out of boredom, or maybe the fear of silence. 18 misses that. "My brother. And a friend of mine."

"Well, they must be alive out there somewhere, eh? If all these folks risin' from the grave is any indication." Some drunk couple stumbles in the door, smelling of freshly disturbed dirt and evergreen. They order fries and sodas, and leave an outrageously large tip before retiring to a window booth to noisily make out. Cana snorts and counts out the change.

"I'm looking for the Briefs," 18 says eventually. Cana flips the pancake with practiced ease, slides them onto two separate plates, drowns them in syrup. Pushes a plate forward. Whatever's left of 18's stomach appreciates the gesture: shit, she's missed sweets. "They're scientists. They have something that might help me find my brother."

"The Briefs? Oh, honey, you're on the wrong side of the planet!"

Her fork freezes halfway to her mouth. "Where are they?"

Cana's husband works cleaning and maintenance on contract, and had, a few years prior, been hired for a real hush-hush job looking after a couple of high-end water purifiers. "The Briefs were husbanding aliens, he swears on his life, a hundred green men from outer space! Y'know, like King Piccolo - were you alive back then? Anyways, if it's the Briefs you're looking for, they run a company called Capsule Corp over in West City. Want the address?"

She's already out the door.

* * *

It's the following evening when she finally finds Capsule Corp, and she spends an hour hanging in the air, concealed by clouds, trying to figure out her next move. She could blow the place up, but there was always the chance that the blueprints would get destroyed. She could sneak in. She might get caught, but she could always take one of them hostage, barter for the prints, as long as she stays clear of Vegeta. No way to move but forward; she'd figure out the rest of the plan along the way. She touches down on a balcony -

\- And finds a woman quietly breastfeeding.

"Oh," the woman says. "You're Android 18, aren't you?"

"Listen, I -" "You came for your blueprints, didn't you."

The fight gets sucked right out of her. "How did you know?"

The woman grins. "I'm Bulma Briefs. I make it my business to know. Besides, with Gero dead, they belong to you."

18 crosses her arms. "Is it going to be that easy?"

"What is this, twenty questions? That's enough, Trunks." The baby in her arms fusses and whines, but it's too late for him; she tucks her shirt and hoists herself to her feet. "Saiyan appetite. - I don't know how Chi-Chi did it. Follow me."

So she does, because she has no other option, but in that moment 18 thinks she might fear Bulma a little more than Vegeta. Surely this isn't the first time she's brought a stranger to their knees by giving them exactly what they want. You kick a guy hard enough and sure, his arm breaks, but if the kid in her arms is half-Saiyan -

"I'm curious," Bulma says, taking her to an elevator heading down. "You're programmed with all these energy-saving protocols. Is it - do you not _want_ to fidget, or can you _not_ fidget?"

"I've never seen the purpose." _It makes me superior to you,_ she thinks. That's a Gero line, stamped in her right under _I must kill Goku._

"I can fix that, you know. Crack you right open and re-route a couple of programs."

"No thanks."

There's a stony silence in the elevator, broken only by Trunks, who's fidgety as all hell. Bulma strokes his cheek. "I think I understand," she says, as the door slides open and they step into a basement lab. "The dragon's limited by a person's will. If you don't want something to happen, no amount of wishing will make it happen."

"Like Goku."

"And like you. Can you hold Trunks for a sec? There you go. Gentle with the head."

18 holds the little half-Saiyan, rigid, uncertain what to do, as Bulma rifles through desk drawers. Her programming is clear: he's weaker than her, and he's the son of a friend of the enemy, and wouldn't it be so easy to drive her fist through his skull, tear Bulma's lungs out of her chest, nuke this whole building into oblivion?

"There we are." Bulma's holding up a rolled-up sheaf of paper. 18 looks up. Somehow she'd gone from holding him to cradling him, disturbed at how fragile everything is.

They exchange past for future. 18 unrolls the sheaf slowly. It's her alright, cut apart and put back together, the person who had lived suspended in a tank of green liquid for four years done up in terrible penmanship and impeccably scaled diagrams. She's been programmed with enough technical knowledge for minor repairs to herself or 17, and most of it makes sense.

There's no name.

There is, however, a home address.

"East City," she murmurs.

"East City?" Bulma is peering over her shoulder. "Is that where you came from?"

"Yeah."

"You planning on going back?" "Yeah."

Bulma clears her throat. "You might not want to go there," she says. "But if you need a home we can put you up -"

 _Like the homeless Namekians. Like Vegeta._ "- Thanks. But no thanks."

* * *

As she comes into view of East City, a storm brewing on the horizon, it occurs to her that maybe Gero chose her and her brother for a reason. Someone's erected a little memorial in the middle of the wreckage for the two hundred thousand people killed during the Saiyan invasion.

18 stands there staring at it for a very long time, and the first thought that occurs to her is that she left her blueprints back at Capsule Corp. Then she tilts her head back into the rain and screams, and screams, and screams.

* * *

When the dust has cleared and everyone has returned home, Cell is dead - but Goku is, too, gone to a place Krillin knows only vaguely. After years and years and years of worry there's nothing left, no Saiyans, no Frieza, no Androids, no Cell. The absence of worry should have come as a small happiness to him, but it also comes with a strange emptiness.

The world has changed since Krillin was a child: there are cities now, their borders patrolled against the wilderness by tanks and men with guns, and martial arts are for sport, not life. People go to grocery stores to buy their milk. Years ago Krillin had delivered milk by foot, of course, and he remembers those days fondly - but they are gone, just like Goku, just like his childhood. Just like Maron, sweet Maron, who shined brighter than all the pearls of the sea, but who could never be tied to a place like Kame House and their old ways of living.

So with no home to speak of Krillin goes to the only home he still has and time, graciously, marches forward.

Seven days after the end of the world he checks himself in the bathroom mirror and notices that his hair's coming back; he'd always been so careful about that, even on Namek. But Orin Temple is gone, up in smoke like the rest of East City, and maybe it was time to put all of that behind him.

He's still thinking about his childhood that night as he settles into the futon in the attic guest room, idly running a hand over the six incense burns on his forehead. He'd been four years old when he'd been initiated. Goku had been in this bed while the rest of them slept downstairs. A dream about his childhood, then Piccolo shouting _wake up, the androids are here_. There's a cool breeze coming off the ocean - when had he opened the window? - and he sighs, rolling out of bed.

There's an intruder on the window sill, framed by moonlight. He snaps to attention, but by the time he's on his feet they've already slipped under the covers. It's -

" - Android 18?"

Damn it, and here he'd been hoping he'd never see her again, never relive that moment when Gohan's eyes had gotten a little wider and he'd said the kind of words only a twelve-year-old would be so brave as to say, something like _oh, I get it, you like her_ \- but maybe he'd always been holding on to a little hope.

"Yeah."

"You, uh." She's filthy, and her clothes need mending, but otherwise it's that same woman who kissed him on the cheek and wished him _good luck_. "You need something?"

"Not really," she says, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She rolls over so her back faces him. "A place to stay for the night." She hops into the room and eases herself into his bed. "I hope that's not an issue."

( _A home_ , she thinks.)

"N-no," he stammers. "Can I, uh."

( _That's what 17 never had,_ she thinks. _Boundaries._ )

"Yeah," she says. "Hop in."

 _Hop in to my own bed_ , he thinks, but like hell he's going to take that up with her. He tucks himself in carefully, not wanting to disturb her.

"Do you - do you even need to sleep?"

She's silent for a long time, and eventually he decides it's the kind of question she doesn't want to answer. He watches the slow rise and fall of her and tries to fall back asleep.

It's strange, of course, sharing a bed with her; she's a cold, empty spot that radiates no life, a sinkhole that breathes and speaks, a black hole whose thoughts had turned to love.

Things could be worse, though. And if she's still around in the morning - well.


End file.
